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Six Decades, One Cycle
By Farah Salka, Staff writer

 

Saint Julians, Malta- Let me tell you a story. My story today is going to be about a Lebanese politician. This person happens be the son of a Lebanese president who served a decade ago. The latter happens to be the grandson of a prime minister another two decades ago. He also is the nephew of (yes, exactly) a member of parliament three decades ago…

Moving on to his character, our fellow politician happens to be constantly right in whatever he says even if it contradicts with what he has stated hours earlier. Don’t you ever dare remind him of such blatant contradictions!!! Behave yourself. He is so selfless and cares for nothing − nothing at all − but the best for his nation. He promises to fight corruption and end hunger in each and every single speech he gives… I apologize for that. I meant in each and every speech written by his assistant or probably his assistant’s other assistant…  He dispenses the best of public positions among his most incompetent relatives and followers. He, simultaneously, happens to attribute every wrong happening in Lebanon to an outside conspiracy, never to internal fraud. He also happens to always have the audacity to declare that he has no hand in any of the massacres that have occurred during the civil war even when he was the same person doing the shooting back then. This politician shall always acknowledge after 30 years of being in power that it is time now to pass power on to his son. He is composed of merely and entirely double standards…

This is not shameful. What is, however, is my second story. This one is going to be a story about a Lebanese citizen.

A Lebanese citizen will always vote for a candidate from his/her religious community even if s/he knows that s/he is a complete liar. The cycle continues. This citizen will vote for this specific politician of this specific religion and convince all his/her relatives to give in the same vote, although this step is really not very significant given all those relatives will understandably pick the same choice either way. What happens later on is that most probably this candidate is going to be elected after the huge flow of either money-based votes or the latter of innocence-based (ignorance that is) ones. Then one month passes. Another one follows. A third one tags on. Unsurprisingly, the elected politician does not fulfill any percent of his/her promises. The elected politician lies. The elected politician steals. The naive voters suddenly become conscious of the fact that it is now (only now) time to get angry and become less passive for once…

They start cursing the people who voted for this person and so on so forth… But hey, give me a minute… Is that because they forgot that they, themselves, were the ones who wanted him/her in the beginning, or is it because a Lebanese citizen is always good rather striking at ignoring facts? Does the $100 bribe some people get during election-time worth the millions that the candidate, they have chosen, will embezzle after he is in power? I wonder. You judge. Then the madness phase is over. The Lebanese citizen gets over it and becomes at ease with the sick situation of the governance. The party of his/her elected politician calls for a strike or any of its synonyms: revolution, demonstration, protest, etc… Of course, our same citizen joins with utmost Lebanese excitement for some action….  And then on, from the time of the first demonstration (and second and third and fourth...) till the time of the re-elections, our dear citizen would have totally forgotten how ineffective our dear politician was, and s/he would elect him/her again and again with full hope and optimism that this person (yes, this person in specific) is the one who will rid Lebanon of all the curses that has befell it since the day it was born. These are the kind of double standards (or probably triple) that a typical Lebanese citizen holds.

I do not seek to simplify the formula to an extent of making it sound foolishly absurd. Nevertheless, my humble knowledge of cause and effect situations in life makes the following clear to me:

Our “dear” politicians are elected. Are they not? Okay. The second given here is that they are elected by our “dear” citizens. Are they not? Okay. Now, the question is if group A is voluntarily choosing group B to govern the country, why is that same group A regretting and niggling after the electoral process is over. An even more irritating question is why is group A re-electing and re-electing and re-electing the same people over and over again? What is so hard about grasping this? They would have never been in that position if it were not for you who got them there… So it is fair and easy. Either you would better refrain from electing them (this does not mean elect their son) or elect them and just simply stop nagging (a nicer way of saying shut up) until the next electoral terms….

“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

For the past six decades of its existence, Lebanon has been deceived as many times as your imagination can go far. Do you want to bring shame to yourself and your country once again?